Target Audience

In marketing and advertising a film, a target audience, or target group is the primary group of people that something, usually an advertising campaign, is aimed at appealing to. A target audience can be people of a certain age group, gender, marital status, etc. Examples include; teenagers, females, single people and more. A certain combination, like men from twenty to thirty is often a target audience. Other groups, although not the main focus, may also be interested. Discovering the appropriate target market to market a product or service to is one of the most important stages involved with market research. Without knowing the target audience, a company's advertising and the selling efforts can become difficult and very expensive.

Here are some of the factors we thought about while discussing our target market:

1. Who is our target audience?

With this in mind, this is one of the first things we looked at, having spoken about the genre of our film. We decided to go for a 1940's war/romance type film. We looked at the different areas shown in out teaser trailer that would attract different types of people. For example, the actual war scenes may attract young ambitious men who dream of a life in the navy, but then again, it could appeal to a much older generation, perhaps ex army men, who wish to re-live their past by watching the movie.

Then there is the romance side to the film, which is aimed at more the female gendre. It is fact that there is nothing some girls would like more that to sit down and watch a good romance movie. Perhaps a grieving widow of her ex army husband may wish to watch the film as an idea that it may help her through this awful time. Perhaps an elderly lady whose prime time was the 1940's may wish to re-live those happy days as a land girl.

Unlike an action movie, or a chick-flick, this romance has no specific target audience in terms on gender, as it will appeal easily to both. This is where we have to begin looking past just the gender aspect of the target audience and dig deeper. as mentioned above, marital status could determine whether one would watch the film. A happily married elderly couple may wish to go to the cinema together to see such a film to bring back memories of their childhoods. Who better to share that moment than with the love of your life?

Also, its true that the cinema is an outing where not many people go alone. Often people go to the cinema with friends, but most popularly as a "date". Adding parts into the trailer that may make one think of his or her partner is always a good idea. Its the little things, such as certain sayings and actions between the two lovers in the film could trigger emotions between partners. This sense of emotion may lead them to go together to the cinema to see the film.

2. Where is our target audience located?

We are definitely aiming to target the British Audience. We discussed different British distributors, and decided that Film 4 would be a good option, targeting the British art house audience and middle class audience after having thought about class systems:

We also looked at 20^th Century Fox, who recently released Juno and Ice Age 3, however, we felt that this didn’t suit the historic genre in which we had chosen, and also, they are not British. Another distributor we looked at was the Major UK production and distribution company, Entertainment Film Distributors. Recent releases include My Sister's Keeper and The Time Traveler's Wife.

We have carried out extensive research on different class systems in Britain. We are aiming the household in out teaser trailer to be more middle class. Considering the class system was not so popular amongst the Americans, and was extremely so in Britain, we have decided to target the British audience, using a British distributor.

This then, means that our target audience are likely to be located in Britain, perhaps in the more country areas, or areas which dedicate memorials to World War II. Areas such as these are likely to have people in them who are interested in the war, and probably even in to. Seeing the War memorial may trigger the brain to sub consciously want to see the film - just a thought.

3. What would you like them to think about our trailer and how will we attract them to our trailer?

Obviously being a teaser trailer, we want our trailer to tease our viewers. This should make them hunger for our film, and the more people it has this effect on, the higher the viewing statistics should be. We want to leave our audience asking questions about our trailer and leave them wanting to know more. We hope to attract them through certain iconography which they will recognize and enigmas which can be left to them to decode.

Our film is a 1940’s war time romance, which alone can attract many different groups and combinations of people. Obviously the paradimical wartime scene will let the audience know at once that this is a war time movie. The steamy scenes of passion within our trailer could be a major attraction to some, while others may enjoy the classical romance between the two lovers.